This College Advisor Built a Consulting Business From Home (Homeschooling, Owning Data & Early LMSs)

Figuring out what college actually costs, whether there's a merit scholarship, whether you qualify for financial aid, has gotten so complicated that kids are turning to TikTok for advice, and a lot of that advice is bad. It's worse for families outside the traditional high school system, since the average high school counselor is stretched across roughly 400 students, and homeschoolers, transfer students, and adults going back to school after a break often have nobody in their corner at all. Jaime Smith has spent over a decade filling that gap as an independent educational consultant, starting in 2014 after years as a teacher. She built her business across three WordPress sites, Online G3 for homeschooled kids, JSmithIEC.com for her consulting and homeschool-parent membership, and Transfer Savvy as the companion site to her book on college transfer, all running on Moodle courses, MemberPress memberships, and a deliberately old school parent email list. In this video you'll learn why she picked a monthly membership over selling a course outright, how she structured her low cost parent training around H5P lessons and Loom videos, why she moved off Kajabi and Thinkific to keep everything on her own site, and what it took to turn a decade of advising experience into a published book. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:23 Educational consultant role 03:14 Becoming a teacher 05:25 Gaps for families 06:47 Going independent 07:48 Moodle and Blackboard 08:17 Pivoting to advising 09:18 Finding new clients 11:04 Launching Online G3 13:55 Three different websites 16:03 Writing the book 20:12 Selling the book 23:06 Newsletter automation 23:54 Inside the membership 26:24 Building the content 28:16 Signup and checkout 31:22 MemberPress course walkthrough 34:40 Recording with Loom 35:51 Resources and calendar 36:56 Parent email list 40:03 Why WordPress 41:50 Kajabi and Thinkific 45:00 Rose hosting 45:50 Using Zoom 47:39 SEO and traffic 49:10 Membership over courses 51:32 Content piracy 53:26 Finding MemberPress 54:28 MemberPress add-ons 58:28 Why she does this 58:59 Future plans 60:52 Where to find Jaime Launch your own membership and course site w/ MemberPress: http://www.memberpress.com/pricing Learn more about MemberPress: http://www.memberpress.com Jaime Smith, Independent Educational Consultant https://jsmithiec.com #CollegeAdmissions #Homeschooling #WordPress